Layout of the National Agronomy CDE Team Activity
The team will be provided a scenario of an agronomic situation and will be asked
to develop a management plan in one hour. The team will be required to develop both
an oral presentation and a written plan that addresses the question in the scenario. The
team will submit a written plan.
All team members are expected to participate in the activity.
Cost information may be utilized for various practices such as irrigation,
machinery, harvesting, seedbed preparation, storage and loan interest rates, as well as
fertilizers and chemicals. The students may be asked to figure profit or loss based on
this information.
Source: http://www.ffa.org/documents/cde_agronomy.pdf
Rational for the layout of the SC Agronomy Team Activity
A management plan similar to one that teams may be asked to create to satisfy a
proposed scenario at the national contest is already given. Teams will be asked to
calculate various parameters of the given management strategy. The first goal is to
give students an idea of the calculations that are required to determine the amounts of
materials needed to perform the necessary operations. If you can determine all of your
inputs (seed, fertilizer, machinery, fuel, labor, pesticides, anticipated yield, etc.), you
should be able to determine your projected profit margin. The second goal is to have
the students divide the work amongst them. This is recommended as the problem is
too great for one student to complete in the given time.
SC FFA Agronomy CDE Team Activity 2010 Example Problem
You set out to plant herbicide tolerant corn in a 500 acre field of your farm. No tillage will
be preformed in this operation. You plan to broadcast fertilizer at the time of planting
based on a soils test and apply nitrogen fertilizer at two later growth stages of your crop.
Herbicide will be applied once before your crop emerges, once during the growing
season, and once shortly before harvest. You have a drawn 24 row no-till drill with a 76
foot swath and a self-propelled sprayer with booms that expand to cover a 100 foot
swath and contain a total of 76 nozzles. All field operations are preformed at 4 miles
per hour. The seed you’ve selected has an 85% field germination rate. The results of a
soil test indicate that you need to apply 100 lbs Nitrogen (N) per acre, 15 lbs
Phosphorus (P) per acre, and 35 lbs Potassium (K) per acre at the time of planting.
1. Your planter is set so that there are 10 inches between each seed in a row.
Calculate how many pounds of seed you need to sow the entire field. There are 1,200
corn seeds per pound.
500 acres 43,560 ft 2 planter 24 rows seed 12 in 1lb seeds
6,878 lbs seed
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
field
1 acre
76 ft
planter 10 in 1 ft 1,200 seeds
field
2. Determine the seed spacing your planter would have to be set at to achieve a
population density of 15,000 plants per acre.
15,000 plants desired 85% field gern

X seeds sowed
100%
X  17,647 seeds
1 acre
43,560 ft 2 24 rows planter 12 in
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 9.35 in
17,647 seeds
1acre
planter
76 ft
1 ft
3. You decide to use 35-0-0, 0-45-0, and 0-0-60 to fulfill the recommendations made by
the soil test and meet the field’s initial nutrient requirements. Calculate how many
pounds of each you need for the field.
100 lbs N 100 lbs fertilizer 1lb N 500 acres 142,857.1bs N

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
1 acre
35 lbs N
1lb N
field
field
15 lbs P 100 lbs fertilizer 1lb P2 O5 500 acres 37,878.8 lbs P2 O5

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
1 acre
45 lbs P2 O5
0.44 lbs P
field
field
35 lbs K 100 lbs fertilizer 1lb K 2 O 500 acres 24,208.3 lbs K 2 O

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
1 acre
60 lbs K 2 O
0.83 lb K
field
field
4. Calculate the theoretical time it will take to spray herbicide once on this field in hours.
This calculation assumes no time is taken to turn, refuel, or refill the tank.
500 acres 43,560 ft 2 sprayer 1 mile
1 hour
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 10.3 hours
field
1 acre
100 ft 5,280 ft 4 miles
5. For your pre-harvest herbicide application, you set each nozzle of your sprayer to
apply 0.2 gallons per minute so that your mixture applies 20 ounces of herbicide per
acre. Calculate the gallons of water that you’ll need to complete this.
1 hour
1 mile
60 min 43,560 ft 2 sprayer 0.2 gallons 76 nozzles 500 acres 9,405 gallons
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
4 miles 5,280 ft 1 hour
1 acre
100 ft min  nozzle
sprayer
field
field